An enterprise system is a collection of “managed targets” that are managed by the enterprise management system. A managed target is a target or entity on which a management agent has been deployed. Example targets include host computing machines, databases, middleware applications, and so on. Each target is an instance of a target type implemented on a computing component (e.g., Weblogic server, J2EE application, and so on). Management of a target includes the ability to collect data on various metrics that correspond to measures of attributes of the target. Example metrics include service time, CPU usage, memory usage, and so on.